Osho on Love and Relatedness

                                         

When you fall in love with a woman, everybody laughs. They think, 'This man has gone crazy!' People start asking, 'What do you see in this woman?' People start asking the woman, 'What do you see in this guy?' But lovers go on seeing things -- all kinds of hallucinations. In a very ordinary girl's face, a lover can see the moon! And the woman can see in her lover all kinds of gods! She cannot believe that such a love has ever happened before or is going to happen again. It is happening for the first time and the last time!

That's why in every language there exists the expression 'falling in love'. It is really falling -- it is falling from your intelligence, falling from your humanity. it is really falling into a ditch! And if you become committed, then you cannot get out of the ditch either! Commitment means, 'I am falling forever,' so the ditch is going to become your grave.

                                     

Marriages have become people's graves -- and I have seen no relationship that works. What works is love, but love is a delicate flower; you cannot depend on it. What works is momentary, but under the impact of love you can become committed and then you will repent, but then you cannot escape from the commitment. You have been brought up with these beliefs: that you have to stick to your promise that you have to be consistent, that you have to fulfill whatsoever word you have given. Now your whole work is wasted. What works as far as love is concerned is momentary; it certainly works for the moment, but no relationship works.

                                  

Relatedness works but not relationship, and you have to understand the difference between the two. Love, the moment it becomes a relationship, becomes bondage. And when you are in bondage it is impossible for you to be festive, to be joyous. You can fulfilL the duty, but duty is an ugly, four-letter word. Duty means now you are caught and you have to do it. Love is not something that you do, it is something that happens; duty is something that you have to do. It is a drag! You become a martyr. You start carrying your cross on your own shoulders, and you may think that you are becoming a Christ...

Look at all the husbands carrying crosses! Look at the wives! Nobody seems to be happy. They are continuously quarrelling, continuously fighting, continuously destroying each other, and reducing each other to commodities, to means. The wife is using the husband; the husband is using the wife. It may be for different purposes -- the wife uses the husband for economic purposes and the husband uses the wife for sexual purposes -- but both are using each other. And how can one be happy when one is being used?

                               

So the moment the husband says, 'What about it tonight?' the wife immediately says, 'I am suffering from a headache,' or she goes into a tantrum or starts a quarrel. So when the husband wants to make love to the wife he has to bring ice cream and a bouquet and a sari, or something economic; then it is business, then it is simply a give and take.

This is not working -- you cannot say that the relationship is working. Yes, if love becomes conscious, then there is a tremendous joy -- it works.

Love ordinarily is unconscious and animal. If you make it conscious -- that means love plus meditation -- then there is a totally different quality to it, a different beauty, a different flavour; then it works. But it works because of consciousness not because of love. And consciousness changes love from a relationship into a relatedness; it changes it more into a friendliness. It is no longer bondage, it gives freedom.

Zen - Zest, Zip, Zap and Zing
Osho

The Theory of Evolution and Dashavatar

Things were going exactly as Srinivasan had feared, his Mother would come in from India and crush his American way of life under her strong South Indian influence. For a genetic scientist like Vasu, as Srinivasan was called by his friends, the only kind of order was disorder. So consumed he was by his research that the world and it's affairs mattered little to him. When his last girlfriend walked out on him, "Find a girl on planet Srinivasan," she had screamed as she stomped out.

Now Vasu's Mother had taken over the administration of the planet. It irritated him, this milk at night and chywanprash* every morning. "Have you been wearing the same pair of Jeans for the past three days?" Mother was beginning her morning interrogation.

Vasu stared at the hot idlis in front of him, the chywanprash to follow and the wardrobe interrogation that had begun. Something snapped in his mind. "Mom I love you and I love that you come all the way from India to take care of me but please don't fuss over me! It irritates me!  And then I cannot work!"

His Mother did not really care if Vasu was upset, "The idlis are getting cold," was her matter of fact response.

"You don't really care, do you, Mom?"

"I care about you Vasu. The work you do is alright. If you don't do it, someone else will do it."

"Mom, I am genetic scientist. I am working on the evolution of man. Theory of evolution, Charles Darwin, have you heard of him? " Vasu was exasperated with her unwillingness to understand. His Mother sat down next to him and smiled, "I know Darwin, Vasu. I also know that what you think he discovered was old news in India."       
                                       
" Yeah sure Mom!" Vasu said with sarcasm.

"Well if you are too smart then listen to this, " his Mother countered." Have you heard of Dashavatar? The ten avatars of Vishnu?" Vasu nodded. "Then let me tell you what you and Mr. Darwin don't know. The first avatar was the Matsya avatar, it means the fish. That is because life began in the water. Is that not right?" Vasu began to listen with a little more attention.

                                          

"Then came the Kurma Avatar, which means the tortoise, cause life moved from the water to the land. The amphibian. So the Tortoise denoted the evolution from sea to land. Third was the Varaha, the wild boar, which meant the wild animals with not much intellect, you call them the Dinosaurs, correct? " Vasu nodded wide eyed.

                                         

"The fourth avatar was the Narasimha avatar, half man and half animal, the evolution from wild animals to intelligent beings. Fifth the Waman avatar, the midget or dwarf, who could grow really tall. Do you know why that is? Cause there were two kinds of humans, Homo Erectus and the Homo Sapiens and Homo Sapiens won that battle." Vasu could see that his Mother was in full flow and he was stupefied.
                         
"The Sixth avatar was Parshuram, the man who wielded the axe, the man who was a cave and forest dweller. Angry, and not social but the seventh avatar  was Ram, the first thinking social being, who laid out the laws of society and the basis of all relationships. 

                                 

The eight avatar was Krishna, the statesman, the politician, the lover who played the game of society and taught how to live and thrive in the social structure. (This is as per Hindu belief, Buddhists may not subscribe to Buddha being the 8th Avatar)

                        

The Ninth avatar, the Buddha, the man who rose from Narasimha and found man's true nature. The nature of Buddha, he identified man's final quest of enlightenment. And finally, my boy, will come Kalki, the man you are working on. The man who will be genetically supreme."

Vasu looked at his Mother speechless. "This is amazing Mom. This makes sense!"

"Yes, it does Vasu! Now have your chywanprash! "


Shared by Parvati (Paro)


* Chywanprash= ayurvedic nutritive cooked mixture.